MARK Morriss is lost. Quite literally. As he stumbles around London in an April drizzle he takes another wrong turn. “I don’t know where I’m going, I feel like I’m just wandering around,” he states, flatly but honestly, on the phone.

It’s been around three and a half years since The Bluetones released their last studio album – and Mark’s busy promoting their new release, A New Athens.

The band play Wrexham’s Central Station next week.

Taking yet another wrong turn to his next promotional appointment, the frontman contemplates the career trajectory of his band.

“You don’t get used to this, so much talking about yourself. We don’t do as much as we used to do – I suppose that’s the way the band has gone.”

That thought is not half as depressing as it sounds at first. Coming from a man who once declared that he’d rather it if his band weren’t famous – it has an air of relief about it.

“We did come about in the middle of all that Britpop, Cool Britannia thing,” he ponders. “We never wanted to be, or felt we were part of that.”

Receptions at Number 10 Downing Street couldn’t have been further from their mind when they named their 1996 debut album Expecting to Fly. It was an homage to a Buffalo Springfield song of the same name.

“Although our influences were British, we were still fans of a lot of American stuff. I suppose it was, in a way, an attempt to divorce ourselves from all the things going on here.”

Tendencies to shy away from the limelight did not prevent the album knocking Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? off the top of the charts.

“I think I know where I’m going now,” says Mark, as the sky begins to clear.

“We’re very lucky that people follow us. We just try to write songs that they connect with.”

It is safe to say the band have never been critic’s darlings. As the hype that surrounded the Bluetones levelled out it would be wrong to condemn them to the elephant’s graveyard of Britpop.

More positive now he is heading in the right direction, Mark contemplates what it is that has kept his band from falling foul of fame’s fickle finger.

“We’ve always had what seems to be a very loyal fanbase. I think because we didn’t chase the fame thing or involve ourselves with the mid-90s Brit scene.

“You notice the change in the crowd – they seem to be getting balder and fatter. That was a bit flippant, but the people who come to see us are those that have stuck from the beginning.”

He quickly adds: “That’s not to say we haven’t picked up some new fans along the way.

“I’ve found it now!” says Mark as the phone goes down and he enters another studio door to preach to the, mostly, converted.

The Bluetones, Wrexham Central Station April 24. Call 01978 358780 for tickets and more information.